John Ashbery: By the Book

The poet, whose latest collection is “Breezeway,” enjoys reading novels. “I’m no doubt a frustrated novelist. Maybe I should try, but at barely three months shy of 88 it seems unlikely.”

What books are currently on your night stand?

There are a couple of volumes of an incomplete 19th-century set of DeQuincey’s essays, notably “Confessions of an English Opium Eater,” which I felt like rereading. My college roommate, with whom I’m in touch, occasionally calls and asks, What are you rereading these days? Another volume has De Quincey’s “The Spanish Military Nun,” whose title has always intrigued me. Then there’s (mea culpa!) “Walden.” I always feel I’m being scolded when I read it. And a long-awaited new volume by the neglected English poet Nicholas Moore (1918-86), whom I first discovered as an undergraduate. Plus the usual array of magazines and newspapers, which I have to have, including the weekly list of school lunch menus in local papers.

Who is your favorite novelist of all time?

Proust.

Whom do you consider the best writers — novelists, essayists, critics, journalists, poets — working today?

On the whole I tend to read poets more than the others, a question of habit. And younger, experimental poets whom I haven’t read yet, from whom I might learn something. How about . . . Emily Skillings? I’m told that my poetry has influenced a lot of younger poets, so it’s nice to find someone who might have absorbed it at second hand and be trying to shake it off — nice, that is, for showing me how to shake off my own influence.

Did you read poetry as a child? What books made you fall in love with poetry?

I had a children’s encyclopedia, The Book of Knowledge, published in England around 1900, which had belonged to my mother. It was divided into sections, including poetry, most of it popular, narrative stuff, like Thomas Hood’s “I Remember, I Remember” and “Eugene Aram,” or “Curfew Must Not Ring Tonight.” But these were like museum pieces. I didn’t discover modern poetry until high school, when I won a book in a Time current events contest. As I recall, there were four possible choices, only one of which seemed at all promising: a Louis Untermeyer anthology of modern British and American poetry. This revealed to me the existence of Wallace Stevens, Auden, Dylan Thomas, W. C. Williams and so many others waiting for me to discover them, which I immediately set about doing. I have to say though that the museum pieces had their place in my scheme of things. The grim ballad of “Eugene Aram” made as strong an impression on me as “I Remember,” though it was not an aesthetic one. Poetry would happen later.

Was there a book of poems or a poet in particular that inspired you to write?

Several of those by poets in Untermeyer, no doubt. Perhaps Auden stood out, due to his difficulty. That sounds strange today, when we know him chiefly for his talkative later stuff, which he hadn’t yet written back then. But I’ve always preferred the early poetry, written before he left England, which can indeed be thorny, with its echoes of Middle English and contemporary popular songs. My favorite work of his from that era is “Paid on Both Sides,” whose title refers to a feud.

Which poets continue to inspire you?

I continue to be inspired by Auden, Stevens, Bishop, MacNeice, Marianne Moore, Dylan Thomas, etc., the list goes on, but I don’t often read them. Once something has inspired you, that’s it. Somebody (maybe me) once described the situation as like standing on the deck of a ship that’s pulling away from shore, smiling and waving at friends who are waving back at you. They still love you and vice versa, but they can’t come along.

Are there poets whom you’ve gained greater appreciation for over time?

Certainly Whitman, whose barbaric yawp didn’t impress me at first, but whose silken language did as I began to live with it. And French poets, of whom I published a volume of translations last year. Had I not received a Fulbright and gone to live there for some years, I wouldn’t have been able to appreciate them.

Do you see your poetry as having evolved over the course of your career? In what ways?

In a strange way, which has puzzled some critics. After the non-success of my Yale volume, “Some Trees,” I found myself living in France, no longer on that Fulbright, and no longer supported by the odd but oddly supportive waves of our national patois. I began buying American magazines and newspapers to get the feel of the language, and using the words in collages. This helped a little, but these works seemed to me purely experimental, transitional ones, but transitional to what? I mostly didn’t show them to people, but the poet John Hollander, whom I didn’t know yet, heard about them and asked to see some. He eventually asked me to submit to the Wesleyan poetry series, of which he was a judge, and they were published as my second collection, “The Tennis Court Oath” (1962).

If you had to name one book that made you who you are today, what would it be?

Again, Proust’s “À la Recherche du Temps Perdu,” for better or worse. You finish it feeling sadder and wiser, so if you’re O.K. with the sadder part, you should take it on.

What genres do you especially enjoy reading? And which do you avoid?

I enjoy novels. I’m no doubt a frustrated novelist. Maybe I should try, but at barely three months shy of 88 it seems unlikely.

What books might we be surprised to find on your shelves?

That depends on who “we” are. (Friends and acquaintances are aware of my frivolity.) There are cookbooks, Julia Child and Jacques Pépin especially. Victorian novels, e.g. Wilkie Collins. The first modern English fiction writers I ever read after discovering their books in the local library, Elizabeth Bowen and Sylvia Townsend Warner. And lots of poetry and histories of cities and architecture. Maybe not so frivolous at that.

Who’s your favorite fictional hero or heroine?

For the latter, Becky Sharp. I read “Vanity Fair” when I was 15, and liked it so much I read “Gone With the Wind” next.

Of the books you’ve written, which is your favorite or the most personally meaningful?

Perhaps “Chinese Whispers” or “Where Shall I Wander.” I cite these because I don’t remember them too well myself, but happened to glance at them recently and got interested. It can be exciting to stumble on a work you’ve forgotten you wrote, and becoming smitten with it, as Randall Jarrell has pointed out.

If you could require the president to read one book, what would it be?

I met him several years ago and was surprised at his knowledge of contemporary poetry, so I think he would be best left to his own devices.

What do you plan to read next?

Now that I can read Proust in French, I’d like to tackle his early, unfinished novel “Jean Santeuil,” which looks pretty substantial.